First in a New Series of Articles!

Hello Friends-
We here at 4th and Short are continuing to expand our output because I'm sure you are just like us...starved for anything that you can get your hands on regarding college football...so we are starting a series of articles on different topics in college football! Our first article comes from our friend Patrick, and we'll let him introduce himself and tell you a little about what he is doing!

Hello 4^th & Short listeners!

First things first – I want to thank Will & Andrew for the opportunity to write for 4^th & Short. I’m a big fan of what they’re doing with this podcast and believe it’s a great resource for the Georgia Tech (and college football) community and am excited to be a part of what they’re doing, for however long they’ll allow me.

A quick introduction – like Will & Andrew, I am a GT alum and huge Tech sports fan, and an Atlanta sports fan in general. I’ve been following Tech athletics since I knew I wanted to attend college there in my junior year in high school (circa 2003). I’d like to say that I’m an objective, unbiased college football fan, but I’m sure my gold-colored glasses show themselves from time to time. I have also had the joy of being friends with both Will and Andrew for several years now, being able to attend and watch several GT sporting events with them.

Enough about me – I want to start off my 4&S writing career with a short series I’m gonna call “GT Mythbusters”. I, like many fellow Tech fans, feel like Paul Johnson’s spread offense catches a lot of flak from both local and national sports media outlets when it comes to his offense. I’ll address these common quips in three sections, starting first with recruiting.

MYTH #1 – PAUL JOHNSON’S UNCONVENTIONAL, NON-PRO-STYLE OFFENSE WILL HANDCUFF GEORGIA TECH’S RECRUITING ABILITY

To be honest, we could spend a whole month’s worth of articles and podcasts talking about the monster that is recruiting. From hat shows to paid subscriptions, it’s safe to say that college football recruiting is nearly out of control. But it no doubt has an impact on a school’s success on the gridiron.

What’s more is that Georgia Tech is at an inherent disadvantage on the recruiting front given the stringent academic demands. For example, all GT students must take calculus. Needless to say this is an easy one for opposing coaches to use – “do you want to have to deal with calculus?”

For our first investigation, let’s take a look at how CPJ has fared recruiting-wise against his predecessor, Chan Gailey. “The Chanimal” was a former NFL coach, spending time with the Cowboys before his time on the Flats, and then with the Bills afterwards. He ran a true pro-style offense and had the typical NFL coaching mindset.  Controlling for school should allow us a fairly accurate view into how well CPJ has done recruiting-wise.

It actually works out pretty to compare CCG and CPJ in recruiting given that both coaches have had six recruiting classes (02-07 for CCG, 08-13 for CPJ). I’ll discount each coach’s first class (2002 and 2008, respectively) based on the conventional wisdom of a coaching change negatively affecting a school’s recruiting (may have to do another article on that at a later date).

The chart below shows the year-to-year Rivals class rankings, the average class ranking, and the standard deviation of the two sets of rankings (this will show how much variation there is for each coach from their “average” class ranking).

Coach	Std Dev	Avg
CG	22.4	53.2
PJ	17.4	54.6

Table A – Division 1 class ranking by year

The two coaches are actually surprising close, with CCG having, on average, one team better in the class rankings. Of course, CCG finished his time at Tech with a great class, including the likes of Morgan Burnett, Demaryius Thomas, Jonathan Dwyer, Josh Nesbitt, and Derrick Morgan and that outlier is certainly helping CCG’s cause. But for the sake of the years we are comparing, it seems CCG was marginally better. Certainly, it would be difficult to compare the two time periods, as recruiting in the Southeast was not nearly as SEC-focused when CCG has at the helm. Note too that CPJ has been slightly more consistent, and has only had one class in the bottom half of Division 1 teams versus three from CCG.

For what it’s worth, it looks like CPJ is in the process of building his best class so far (2014), currently sitting at #29 per Rivals. All things being considered, I’d say that CPJ having only a single-team average difference is something to be proud of, comparatively.

So now we know more how CPJ did compared to his predecessor, let’s take a look at how well he has done within the conference compared to how well  to CCG did. Chart showing relative ranking is shown below. As you look at the chart, keep in mind that there were only nine ACC teams up until VPI, Miami, and BC joined in 2005, so the chart is based on reverse percentiles.

Coach	Std Dev	Avg
CG	0.26	69%
PJ	0.13	72%

Table B – Relative reverse class ranking compared to other ACC teams

We find some similar patterns here. CPJ has more consistency, but CCG was marginally better. We also see how CCG’s great 2007 class and CPJ’s awful 2013 class have significant effect.

So what can we conclude?  Taking out each coach’s best and worst classes gives CPJ the clear edge. Also very safe to say recruiting in the world of Twitter, Instagram, “I don’t know [why I switched]”, and on-campus Chick-Fil-A’s is very different than it was during the six years that CCG was here.

Verdict: PLAUSIBLE, BUT UNLIKELY

 - Patrick

Agree? Disagree? email any comments to 4thandshortpodcast@gmail.com